Talks between Iran's nuclear negotiator and a top envoy for the EU ended late on Thursday with few signs they were closer to breaking their deadlock over Iran's nuclear ambitions.
Javier Solana, the EU's foreign policy chief, said talks with Ali Larijani, the Iranian negotiator would start again within weeks.
"We cannot say that there has been a fundamental breakthrough, but what we can say it that we have advanced in many important subjects," Solana told a brief news conference after the four-hour meeting outside Madrid.
Exactly one year after the US President George W. Bush's administration offered to reverse almost three decades of US foreign policy and enter European nuclear talks with Iran, Washington and Tehran are holding to the same entrenched positions regarding Iran's uranium enrichment activities. Enriched uranium can be used to produce nuclear fuel, but at much higher grades can be used in nuclear warheads.
US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice accused Iran on Thursday of trying to "perfect technologies that are going to lead to a nuclear weapon."
She said the US and its allies would continue to seek to isolate Iran financially if it did not suspend its enrichment program. She repeated the US ultimatum that the US would seek action both within and outside the UN Security Council if Iran did not accept the offer to talk, along with the strings attached.
"The question is not why won't we talk to Tehran, but why won't Tehran talk to us," Rice told a news conference at a meeting of international female political leaders.
Larijani dismissed the possibility of suspending uranium enrichment on Thursday, telling journalists in Madrid that Tehran had "abandoned the suspension issue," but that it was nonetheless "quite serious about reaching out for a solution to these problems as soon as possible."
Solana acknowledged before the meeting that hopes for a breakthrough were slim.
"It's true that as time goes by, if the situation continues, probably the agreement will be more complicated," Solana said. "I will try to see if we can pave the way in order to get into formal negotiations."
Foreign ministers of the G8 nations issued a statement on Wednesday that said, "if Iran continues to ignore demands of the Security Council, we will support" more sanctions at the Security Council, which has already passed two sets of mild sanctions against Iran in the past six months.
A European official briefed on the negotiations said Larijani hinted, ahead of talks in Ankara, Turkey, last month, to diplomats involved in the ongoing negotiations that Iran might be prepared to suspend partially its enrichment process as a condition for lifting sanctions and beginning formal talks. It was reported on Wednesday that this nascent proposal was dismissed by European diplomats and then withdrawn by Iran.
Incumbent Ecuadoran President Daniel Noboa on Sunday claimed a runaway victory in the nation’s presidential election, after voters endorsed the young leader’s “iron fist” approach to rampant cartel violence. With more than 90 percent of the votes counted, the National Election Council said Noboa had an unassailable 12-point lead over his leftist rival Luisa Gonzalez. Official results showed Noboa with 56 percent of the vote, against Gonzalez’s 44 percent — a far bigger winning margin than expected after a virtual tie in the first round. Speaking to jubilant supporters in his hometown of Olon, the 37-year-old president claimed a “historic victory.” “A huge hug
Two Belgian teenagers on Tuesday were charged with wildlife piracy after they were found with thousands of ants packed in test tubes in what Kenyan authorities said was part of a trend in trafficking smaller and lesser-known species. Lornoy David and Seppe Lodewijckx, two 19-year-olds who were arrested on April 5 with 5,000 ants at a guest house, appeared distraught during their appearance before a magistrate in Nairobi and were comforted in the courtroom by relatives. They told the magistrate that they were collecting the ants for fun and did not know that it was illegal. In a separate criminal case, Kenyan Dennis
A judge in Bangladesh issued an arrest warrant for the British member of parliament and former British economic secretary to the treasury Tulip Siddiq, who is a niece of former Bangladeshi prime minister Sheikh Hasina, who was ousted in August last year in a mass uprising that ended her 15-year rule. The Bangladeshi Anti-Corruption Commission has been investigating allegations against Siddiq that she and her family members, including Hasina, illegally received land in a state-owned township project near Dhaka, the capital. Senior Special Judge of Dhaka Metropolitan Zakir Hossain passed the order on Sunday, after considering charges in three separate cases filed
APPORTIONING BLAME: The US president said that there were ‘millions of people dead because of three people’ — Vladimir Putin, Joe Biden and Volodymyr Zelenskiy US President Donald Trump on Monday resumed his attempts to blame Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy for Russia’s invasion, falsely accusing him of responsibility for “millions” of deaths. Trump — who had a blazing public row in the Oval Office with Zelenskiy six weeks ago — said the Ukranian shared the blame with Russian President Vladimir Putin, who ordered the February 2022 invasion, and then-US president Joe Biden. Trump told reporters that there were “millions of people dead because of three people.” “Let’s say Putin No. 1, but let’s say Biden, who had no idea what the hell he was doing, No. 2, and
RSS